December 15, 2013 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Dual Citizenship

Calum I. MacLeod
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 146:5–10
Isaiah 35:1–10
Matthew 11:2–11

“Go and tell John what you hear and see.”
Matthew 11:4 (NRSV)

We trust God,
whose Love and Justice are revealed over and over
through creation, community, and story,
through the voices of prophets
and the lives of ordinary people,
through a helpless newborn baby.

Teri Peterson
An Advent Affirmation of Faith

Just under a month ago on Monday, November 18 at 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon I attended a swearing-in ceremony in the immigration office downtown at Congress at which I became a citizen of the United States. There were about 150 of us being sworn in at that ceremony representing, we were told, 42 nations. Missy came and witnessed it. So did Adam Fronczek and Hardy Kim, my colleagues. We sang the National Anthem. I pledged allegiance to the flag and took the oath of allegiance. And then in a very touching way the immigration officer presiding read the name of every person who was receiving their citizenship and each of us walked up and were given our certificate of naturalization. It was moving.

There were many people there who clearly were refugees, individuals who genuinely had escaped situations of oppression in their home countries and for whom this journey to the United States was one to find freedom and hope. For me it was the culmination of my journey here in the United States. I received residency in May 2005 and had to wait some time before I could think about applying for naturalization and to become a citizen. I thought, during the ceremony, of my friend Barrie Shepherd, who has preached here before at Fourth Church. Barrie is a native of Scotland, like me. He was for many years the minister of the First Presbyterian Church in New York City, and soon after his retirement, Barry and his wife became US citizens. They had lived here for forty years but never had become citizens. But after the events of September 11, 2001, when Barrie lost a number of the members of First Presbyterian Church in the Twin Towers, they decided that it was time that they would become citizens in an act of solidarity with the American people.

Some people ask, “Why do you do this? Why undertake citizenship?” There are a number of good reasons, practical reasons. One of the reasons is I now become a victor in the American Revolution. That’s a terrible gag, isn’t it? I also, after many years, finally have a team in the World Cup in Brazil next summer. (Scotland, as usual, did not qualify, so I will be cheering for the U.S. soccer team as they take the field. They are, however, in the “group of death,” and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, you can come up and ask me after.)

It was interesting to call my father and tell him I was undertaking this move to become a citizen. He expressed a little concern that becoming a citizen would mean that I would give up my citizenship in the United Kingdom and my European Union passport. I was happy to explain to him that the American authorities did not require that. The requirement is only that whenever I leave the country or come into the country I use my American passport, but that I can keep my E.U. passport, my U.K. citizenship, and, in essence, become a dual citizen of the United States and of the U.K.

It’s an intriguing, interesting concept that of dual citizenship. In some sense we are all dual citizens, all who come here week by week seeking in our own way to follow Christ, to live out the gospel together, a gospel of love and justice. We are, of course, citizens of this earthly realm in all of its brokenness and the hurt that it can bring, but we’re also citizens of the kingdom, of God’s kingdom ushered in by Jesus Christ.

Our swearing-in ceremony is our baptism. “Michael, you were sworn in today as a citizen of the kingdom.” In our text this morning, this great Advent text, we encounter John the Baptist, John who has baptized Jesus in the Jordan and declared that he who is coming is greater than the one who prepares the way. But here in the middle of Matthew’s Gospel we find John the Baptist expressing something like disappointment perhaps. John has been imprisoned by Herod and sends his disciples to ask of Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come? Are you the messiah?” It would seem that John the Baptist, the prophet, the one who prepared the way for Jesus, expected a particular type of messiah. John has been imprisoned by Herod, the client ruler who is responsible to the Roman Empire, the authority that has invaded the Holy Land. It almost seems as if John is expecting a messiah who is going to come and by force, by arms, liberate the people from that authority. But Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom is not one about force and arms. “Go and tell John,” says Jesus, “go and tell John that the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news.” Gospel, hope, good news for the poor. Jesus is standing in the line of the psalmist proclaiming God’s liberation. Jesus stands in the line of the prophet Isaiah with that promise of the blind receiving sight and hope for the poor.

You see John the Baptist, it seems, is still stuck in this realm where peace is Roman peace, the Pax Romana, which is peace that simply means the absence of war because the Romans have oppressed the people and quell any uprising that happens in any of their client states. This is not the peace which passes all understanding that Jesus promises. It is of a different nature, of a different realm. Jesus does not conform to any of the expectations of the day of what messiah meant because messiah meant a cycle of violence, of oppression of others.

We are dual citizens: citizens of this realm, but also a promised realm to come. And it’s not just us; we see this in the lives of others. Millions of words have been written and expressed and spoken about Nelson Mandela since his death. I found one of the most interesting stories around Mandela was the fact that he invited his jailors to attend his swearing-in as president of South Africa. And when he was asked why he was doing this, why he was forgiving those who had brutalized him, he said, “If I’m not able to forgive them, then I remain in their power and in jail.”

Another extraordinary statesman, perhaps the Mandela of his own time, was Dag Hammarskjöld, the General Secretary of the United Nations. He was the visionary who saw the United Nations as a peacekeeping force for the world. Hammarskjöld was a pragmatic politician on the world’s stage in the late ’50s and early ’60s. He was also a devout Christian. His book of reflections, Markings, is one of the classics of twentieth-century Christian literature. He famously wrote, “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance renewed daily of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason.”

Dual citizens. Citizens of this realm, yes, of the pragmatic and political world, but also with an eye to that which is wholeness and justice and love. I think that that is what Advent is about, about recognizing that we are dual citizens. In fact, I think the truth about Advent is that it is not really just about these four weeks that we mark in December, but that Advent is the place in which the church lives every Sunday, indeed every day of the year. You see, I think Advent is about what it means to be church, to be community—a community that celebrates incarnation, that lives ministry, grieves the death on the cross, and celebrates the resurrection and the promise of the kingdom of love and justice of which we are citizens. Advent is what it means to be church, to gather on a day like this, to take ourselves out of the hurly-burly of the shopping and of the season as the marketers would have it. It is to gather together as dual citizens and to be able in the midst of it all to affirm together in the words of Alan Boesak, a famous anti-apartheid campaigner from South Africa, who was a guest preacher here earlier this year:

It is not true that this world and its inhabitants are doomed to die
     and be lost.
This is true: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so      that everyone who believes in him shall not die but have     everlasting life.
It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination,
     hunger and poverty, death and destruction.
This is true: I have come that they may have life and have it
     abundantly.
It is not true that violence and hatred shall have the last word and
     that war and destruction have come to stay forever.
This is true: For unto us a child is born. To us a son is given on whom
     authority will rest and whose name will be the Prince of Peace.
It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil that seek
     to rule the world.
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth and lo, I
     am with you always to the end of the age.
It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted,
     who are prophets of the church, before we can do anything.
This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all people and your sons and
     daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions and
     your old folks shall dream dreams.
It is not true that our dreams of liberation of humankind, our dreams
     of justice, of human dignity, of peace are not meant for this earth
     and its history.
This is true: The hour comes and it is now.

We are dual citizens.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.